Skeptickle

The story that led to us choosing Café Primavera as our caterer is actually quite uncustomary. I started searching for a good but (relatively) affordable caterer after we changed our date. Only two caterers that I talked to who were on the Nestldown preferred vender list fit within our price range. There were a couple more that dropped the ball and didn’t get back to me so I assumed that they didn’t need our business. One of the people I got a hold of was Erika of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme catering. She met with us at a Starbucks and went over what they were about and asked us a lot of questions about the types of food we like and what we imagined things to be like for our wedding. She answered my prepared list of questions very professionally.

We scheduled a tasting at Nestldown while another wedding was going on, which I guess is standard for them. Sorry no pictures of that tasting, but it’s pretty much the same as the one for Cafe Primavera, except PSRT didn’t let us try the vegetarian dish. The food was delicious, but what totally blew us away was their homemade ginger ale. It was the best ginger ale we’ve ever had, with fresh bits of ginger floating in it. We seriously drank a whole bottle of it by the end of the tasting. So we were pretty set: good food, good ginger ale, and we really enjoyed working with Erika. I kept attempting to get a hold of Continental Caterers because they initially responded to my queries but they seemed too busy to get back to me when I was trying to schedule a meeting.

So we sat on making a catering decision because we knew it would be wiser to try out at least one other place before signing a contract. About a month went by and then Erika emailed us to tell us she was leaving PSRT and will be working at Cafe Primavera. Our file will be transferred to someone else within the company and they will be taking care of us from then on. I was both surprised and curious. I asked her more about the company she will be working for. She was reluctant to tell me about them because she didn’t want it to seem like she’s trying to steal clients (which she wasn’t, it was all my own doing). In the end, I convinced her to let us try the food at Cafe Primavera to quench my own curiosity.

Review of Cafe Primavera after the jump

We met Erika and the owner, Joanna, at the Cafe in the Tech Museum for our meeting/tasting. It actually meant a lot to us that Joanna took the time to meet with us too. It’s not like owners of catering companies have tons of time on their hands. It made the meeting far more personable and showed us that she cared about her company and her potential clients. We chatted about wedding stuff and then we got to try these:

Petit filet with mushrooms, potato & butternut gratin, and asparagus spears.

Wild salmon with garlic mashed potatoes and baby heirloom tomatoes.

Tomato, portobello, and eggplant napoleon with port balsamic reduction.

I wish I took a picture of the ors d’oeuvres, but we gobbled them up before I could :p. Erika picked a wide variety of them to show us the cultural range of cooking they do, included were tuna tartare, Thai peanut chicken skewers, mushroom ragout on toast, mini chicken tacos, and crabcakes with spicy aoli.Yummers!  They were absolutely phenomenal! Out of all the entrees, my favorite happened to be the vegetarian option. Caterers usually do a half-assed job on vegetarian meals but not Cafe Primavera. It’s also a plus that they actually let us even try it! To say the least, we walked out of that meeting feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

A few days later, Erika sent us a quote and it was pretty much the same stuff but was much less costly than at PSRT. Thanks to our DOC contacting them for us, Continental Caterers finally got back to me around this time and wanted to schedule a tasting. I figured we should give them a chance but I had doubts because it seemed like we had to work around their schedule which means there were only a couple openings each month to meet with them. Then they dropped the bomb that we had to pay a tasting fee of $20 each! And we had to share our tasting dishes with other couples so we can try all their different dishes.We never had to pay a tasting fee or shared tastings with complete strangers so maybe we were spoiled, but it certainly didn’t give me any inclination to give them a chance any longer.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. After changing a few details around with Erika, we signed the contract with Cafe Primavera and we didn’t regret it one bit. Erika was very nice in helping us pick out linens and was very accommodating when I changed my mind about things. The staff at our wedding was very professional. I especially liked the server that was serving Rob and I, she complimented me on my music choices, hehe.

One thing that would’ve made it perfect was a small incident with one of the beer choices. I was given pretty much free choice for beers so I picked Amstel Light, Fat Tire, and Chimay Blue. I checked with Erika about the Chimay because it’s normally high-end and harder to find. She told me their beverage manager had no problems with it so it should be okay. Of course I told all my beer-drinking friends because it’s one of the best beers out there and I wanted them to enjoy it at our wedding. When it came time to serve it…they only had two bottles. I was given the decision of who to distribute it to, which is not really something I wanted to deal with at the time. I made sure my brother got some and my bridesman, but was disappointed that not everyone who wanted some got to have it. I wish I was informed ahead of time that it would be a problem so I can switch to another beer so our guests could have more variety to choose from.